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Yet, under that surface professionalism, deep down, she sensed that he was attracted to her. His interest made her uneasy.
     Self-conscious, studying the vague silvery tracks of rain on the black window, she said' 'I had a terrible inferiority complex back then.'
     'Why?'
     'My parents.'
     'Isn't it always?'
     'No. Not always. But in my case ... mainly my mother.'
     'What were your folks like?'
     'They have nothing to do with this case,' she said. 'They're both gone now, anyway.'
     'Passed away?'
     'Yes.'
     'I'm sorry.'
     'No need to be. I'm not.'
     'I see.'
     That was a harsh thing for her to have said. She was surprised to realize that she didn't want him to think badly of her. On the other hand, she was not prepared to tell him about her parents and the loveless childhood she had endured.
     'But about Dylan ...,' she began, and then wasn't sure where she had left off.
     Haldane said, 'You were telling me why you misjudged him right from the start.
     'See, I was so good at fending people off, so good at alienating everyone and keeping myself snug in my shell, that no one ever got close to me. Especially not boys ... or men. I knew how to turn them off fast. Until Dylan. He wouldn't give up. He kept asking me for dates. No matter how often I rejected him, he came back. My shyness didn't deter him. Rudeness, indifference, cold rejection — nothing would stop him. He pursued me. No one had ever pursued me before. Not like Dylan. He was relentless. Obsessed. But not frightening in any way, not that kind of obsession. It was corny, the way he tried to impress me, the things he did. I knew it was corny at the time, but it was effective just the same. He sent flowers, more flowers, candy, more flowers, even a huge teddy bear.'
     'A teddy bear for a young woman working on her doctorate?' Haldane said.
     'I told you it was corny. He wrote poetry and signed it "A Secret Admirer." Trite, maybe, but for a woman who was twenty-six, hardly been kissed, and expected to be an old maid, it was heady stuff. He was the first person who ever made me feel ... special.'
     'He broke down your defenses.'
     'Hell, I was swept away.'
     As she spoke of it, that special time and feeling came back to her with unnerving vividness and power. With the memories came a sadness at what might have been, a sense of lost innocence that was almost overwhelming.
     'Later, after we were married, I learned that Dylan's passion and fervor weren't reserved solely for me. Oh, not that there were other women. There weren't. But he pursued every interest as ardently as he'd pursued me. His research into behavior modification, his fascination with the occult, his love of fast cars — he put as much passion and energy into all those pursuits as he had put into our courtship.'
     She remembered how she had worried about Dylan — and about the effect that his demanding personality might have on Melanie. In part, she had asked for a divorce because she had been concerned that Dylan would infect Melanie with his obsessive-compulsive behavior.
     'For instance, he built an elaborate Japanese garden behind our house, and it consumed his every spare moment for months and months. He was fanatically determined to make it perfect. Every plant and flower, every stone in every walkway had to be an ideal specimen. Every bonsai tree had to be as exquisitely proportioned and as imaginatively and harmoniously shaped as those in the books about classic Oriental landscaping. He expected me to be as caught up in that project — in every project — as he was. But I couldn't be. Didn't want to be. Besides, he was so fanatical about perfection in all things that just about anything you did with him sooner or later became sheer hard labor instead of fun. He was an obsessive-compulsive unlike any other